Pale Eyes
by RiaKitsuneYoukai
Summary: People are often judged by their appearances. -Light, littlekid Naruhina-


Hinata always liked things that had some sort of order. Not that she was a perfectionist or anything, but she prefered having everything laid out nicely. Like now, with the small pile of papers, pink notebook, and crayons she had on her part of the long desk, laid out in a row from biggest to smallest. The orange crayon, which she used the least, at the end of the row, and the barely-surviving black crayon opposing it. With the drawing utensils falling from one side to another -- a multicolored xylaphone, it somewhat reminded her of, like the one her little sister owned -- it looked pretty.

Satasfied, after pushing the red crayon ahead half an inch, Hinata leaned away from the desk, and placed her hands on her lap, admiring her work.

"NARUTO! Get back here!"

The startled girl had not even a second to glance up before her nicely-arranged stationary was blasted apart by a flash of orange, and she threw her arms in front of her face to block the objects flying at and from her. The sounds of banging and scattered possessions continued, though the volume decreased slightly as the person causing it moved farther away. She moved her arms from her face slowly, keeping an eye closed, cautiously, as though expecting the crayons to suddenly attack her. Spying no movement, the kunoichi slowly relaxed.

Heavy footsteps came next -- a surprising trait for a ninja -- in the form of Hinata's teacher. His breath harsh with frustration, hands balled up and looking ready to give someone some long, grueling punishment. The man sighed thickly and looked down at his student, who shrunk away slightly, though with no necessity; at the sight of a well-behaving person, Iruka's expression softened.

"Are you alright, Hinata?"

The girl nodded, unsure of her position. Her teacher glanced down at her scattered writing things and growled as she began picking them up.

"That kid... OII!"

Hinata jumped as Iruka-sensei yelled again, his head turned towards the classroom door. She ignored the few crayons that had bounced out of her hands and looked where he did; Uzumaki Naruto was dancing and making faces at his teacher from the supposed safety of the doorjam.

Every movement after that was blurry, even to the Byakugan-eyed girl. She felt a small whiff of air as her sensei threw three, hopefully dulled, shuriken at her classmate. She watched the eyes of that same classmate go wide and heard him gurgle out a scream before being pinned to the wall by the sleeves of his shirt. He immeadiatly began screaming at his attacker, wriggling about between the weapons in an attempt to escape, but stopped abruptly as the third bladed star lodged itself into the wood an inch above his head.

"Sensei! You could have killed me! You can't kill a student!"

"You might not BE a student if you keep this up, Naruto. Look at the mess you've made of this room!"

"You wouldn't actually fail me on the second day of school."

"Do you think you know me that well?" replied the teacher, sighing at the troublesome boy. Squinting in a fox-like manner, said boy pouted for a moment, then began worming around in place again. Hinata stood to see better.

"You've made a real mess of this place, you know. Firstly, you'll clean this place up -- and I mean SPOTLESSLY, Naruto," he added, crossing his arms to emphisise what he was speaking, "and then I want you to come see me in the teacher's lounge. You skip any of those instructions and I'll have you wait another year for your shinobi training."

"But, sensei! Sensei! That's not fair!" whined the boy, kicking the wall in another attempt to free his body from its bindings. Iruka ignored him, and turned to Hinata, a tired smile on his lips.

"Hinata, could you keep an eye on this kid until he's finished cleaning the room?"

"Ahh... ano... I don't..."

"You don't have to help him, or anything, just make sure he does things right and doesn't leave before seeing me."

"Ano...!"

"I'll send a message to your father to let him know that you'll be staying a little later. Alright?"

Resigning, the kunoichi nodded.

* * *

"I can't believe he made me stay here and do this...! It's not right! I should be training to become Hokage RIGHT NOW!"

Hinata watched the boy, ranting and sweeping, from her seat at the front of the room, her knees pulled up to her chest in this uncomfortable situation. She wasn't used to staying at the academy this long, and by herself, no less.

Well, not technically "by herself", but any time this girl was in a spot where she was not around people she knew well... at least someone she was aquainted to... she knew Naruto, of course, but had never spoken to him. So, in the mind of Hinata, she was alone in a place she didn't really like being.

"Hey, what about you? Why are you still here?"

Suddenly aware of the boy's close proximity, the girl released her legs and shuffled backwards a little. Naruto squinted at her, leaning on the straw broom, and she responded by tucking a clump of black hair behind her ear and stuttering out an explination.

"Iruka-sensei asked me to stay," she said, simply. The student ninja afront her made a loud, "Ahhh," noise and lifted his broom over the shoulders of his orange and blue jacket, resting his forearms on the wood.

"So, are you in trouble too? Is sensei making you do a test?"

Feeling as though she were a burrowed animal being poked with a stick, the girl shyly shook her head. She was not comfortable talking to someone her age by herself.

Hinata felt that her classmate was unsatasfied with her anwser, for his squint seemed thinner and his lips puffed out in a look of small annoyance. He opened one shockingly blue eye to stare at her, and she felt herself shrink away a bit more, he taking a few strutting steps foreward and squatted in front of her.

"Are you blind?"

The girl blinked, completely confused. Blind, how did he mean? Had she missed something in their conversation that he found important? Had she insulted him without knowing? With her hands again in close to her body, and closer to her face in case she needed to hide herself, the kunoichi mumbled an, "Excuse me...?"

"Blind? You know, when you can't see stuff."

To accentuate his point, Naruto released on of his hands from the broom handle and waved it in front of Hinata's face. She stared at him, totally bewildered.

"You're eyes are all white-ish. Don't blind people usually have white eyes?"

The boy began ignoring his aquaintance's stammers and started talking, mostly to himself, about blind people.

"Ano... I'm not... but I'm not..."

"I don't know if I've seen a blind person before, especially a shinobi... hey, maybe you're the first blind ninja ever!"

Hinata assumed that the boy was again talking to her, so she tried to interject, "But... I'm not--"

"But there's this other guy... that guy who looks kind of like you, only with kind of long hair. You might know him: eyes like yours, really big band-aid on his head?"

"Yes! That's Neji-ni--"

"Neji!" Naruto snapped his fingers in realization, "Yeah, that's his name. But if you're blind, how could you see him? But then he might be blind, too. That's a lot of blind people I know!"

"But I'm not...!"

"I think I saw his dad once -- but it might have been your dad too. I can't tell the differance. Is he blind, too? Why do you all have the same eyes? How do you copy notes in class?"

"Naruto-kun, I'm not...!"

"Hey, how come you know my name?"

"I heard Iruka-sensei calling you--"

"Ahh, the whole academy probably heard him yelling at me. I didn't do anything too bad. Just a little ninjit-- hey, how do you do ninjitsu? Can you do it? How does a blind person see their opponent, or their target?"

"I guess they would feel vibrations--"

"That's so cool! Could you teach me? I have to know lots of things to become Hokage, and if I could feel vibrations I could fight even in the dark! That'd be so cool! Hey, what's your name again?"

"Hinata..."

"Okay, okay! Hinata, you can show me how to feel vibrations like a blind person, right?"

"Ano... Naru--"

"C'mon, show me!"

Naruto speedily grabbed his classmate's wrist and pulled her to her feet, and the girl stumbled for a moment before deciding that it was in this moment she had to explain that she wasn't blind and she couldn't teach the boy how to feel vibrations. She took a deep breath and said, by her standards, quite loudly, "Naruto-kun! I'm not blind!"

"... Really?"

Hinata nodded, her face warm in a mix of embarrasment and anticipation for a response.

"Then how come your eyes are all... like that?"

"It's... something my family... all have."

"So... it's a family trait?"

She nodded again, and, although dissappointment was evident in her classmate's eyes, so was a dawning curiousity.

"Does everything have a white glow to it? When you look at things, I mean. When you look at me, am I whitish?"

"No... I see like everyone else... I guess..."

Naruto grinned and pulled the broom off his back, making himself comfortable in the girl's previous seat.

"Do you have x-ray vision? Can you see through walls and stuff?"

* * *

"Hinata, where's Naruto?" came a poking from the doorway. Both the students jumped and turned to look at their oncoming sensei, and at the same time realized that the room was not yet clean.

"I told him to come to my office when he was done cleaning, and... oh. You're not done."

Iruka gave a stern glance towards the kunoichi, then fixated his look on the punished boy.

"Naruto, why haven't you finished? It's been over an hour since I told you to do this..."

"Ah, haha, Hinata and I were talking about blind things and how she's not and can't feel vibrations and the white layers on things that I thought she saw but doesn't and how we can't tell if she sees the same as normal people or not, so... I'm not done yet."

The ninja boy gave his best squinty-eyed grin at his teacher, who sighed and shook his head, a small smile playing across his face.

"You're going to finish cleaning this after school tomorrow, you know."

"Aww! Sensei! That's not fair!"

The teacher laughed and stepped out the door, motioning for his students to follow. Naruto turned to the girl and repeated his squinty-grin.

"Let's go, Hinata!"

She nodded, then glanced back at the still messy room.

It probably could have been cleaned quickly, had the two in-training shinobi not been talking for so long. But as she thought about it, Hinata realised that if her neat little spot of stationary hadn't been messed up, she would have gone home alone as always, and not talked to Naruto. So, maybe, sometimes it was better to have no order at all.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

Yay for drabbles. I'm happy that I've finally been able to end a story whose ending has some sort of relation to its beginning. 3  
Inspired by a Naruhina icon that said, "Are you blind?"  
Reveiws are very much appretiated. ♥


End file.
